The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1887-02-12
TOWsONTOWN Md, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1887.

wearer OF the Grape and the person
whose death it commentaries. From
the distant cousin up to the parent and
the widow, the fashion of the mourning
garb, and the time during which it must
be worn, vary according to a fixed reg
ulation, that leaves about as much room
for the exercise of the individual will as
is afforded the dwellers at Sing Sing or
Blackwell's Island in the selection of
their habiliments. The intrinsic arti-
ficiality of the thing is patent to any
one who will visit store where mourn
ing goods are sold. Such establish
ments comprise many different depart
ments, and mourners seeking habili-
mental consolation are first examined
as to the degree of their bereavement,
and are then directed to department A,
B, or C, according to their answers. To
the charge Of crape-wearing being arti-
fetal as well as expensive, we may add
that it is also injurious to health; for it
is a common experience that the long
black wells imposed by fashion have an
injurious effect upon the wearer, adding
the pains of headache to the pangs of
heartache, in only too many instances.
Surely there is but little ground for
complacence in the reflection that the
various trappings and emblems of woe
which quaint old Quarles enumerates as
"Death's heads, graves, knels, blacks, and tombs"
are the peculiar property of Christen-
dom, being almost entirely unknown to
pagan antiquity. The elder D'Israeli,
in mentioning the fact that the skeleton,
as symbol of death, is an invention of
the middle ages, adds: The ancient
artists so rarely attempted to personsify
death that we have not discovered a single
revolving image of this nature in all the
works Of antiquity This being SO,
the conception of death as an awful
specter, and the wearing of gloomy
black as a compulsory tribute to his
grimness, can hardly be regarded as a
mark of superiority over our pagan pre-
decessors.
1t would, of course, only provoke
storm of righteous indignation to hint
that the reason for so much gloom on
the occasion of death is, that in the
stress of affliction the Christians faith
fails him, and that, for the time, the
glories of the world beyond seem to
vanish. Yet this passionate mourning,
which, instead of being hidden in the
depths of the heart, is obtruded upon
the notice of every passer-by, how shall
it be made to harmonic with the belief
that the good who die are indefinitely
happier than they were before? To don
the sable weeds of mourning because
some one we love has been promoted
from this world of pain and temptation
to an eternity of peace, is, to say the
least, strangely inconsistent; while to
all the world that, despite our loved
ones immeasurable gain, we can only
think of our own loss, is to proclaim
our selfshness with frankness which is
as unworthy as it is unnecessary.
In this matter of empowering it
would seem that the older countries of
the world might, with advantage, sit at
the feet of Australia and New Zealand, /,
and learn from those young colonies a
lesson of which the former are much in
need. In both those countries the an
nouncement of death, in the press, is
often followed by these significant words:
by the wish of the deceased, his rela-
tives will not wear mourning And
this suggests a still more efficacious
method of abolishing the practice. AS
the world we'll knows, there are no in
functions so scrupulously obeyed as those
which rich testators lay upon the recip-
tents of their bounty. Let it then be-
come the rule that among the clauses of
every will shall be included one enjoin-
ing the legatees to wear no Grape, on
pain of forfeiture of their bequests, and
the reign of Grape will soon be ended.
Tile F01nm.